WegianWarrior:How cute, trying out one of the things that makes Norwegian akvavit so durn tasty.

http://www.norsk-akevitt.org/article.aspx?catID=1321&artID=3954

Yep. Linie Aquavit is named after the tradition of sending oak barrels of akvavit on ships from Norway to Australia and back again, thereby passing the equator (Linie) twice before being bottled. http://www.linie.com/

Delay:WegianWarrior: How cute, trying out one of the things that makes Norwegian akvavit so durn tasty.

http://www.norsk-akevitt.org/article.aspx?catID=1321&artID=3954

Yep. Linie Aquavit is named after the tradition of sending oak barrels of akvavit on ships from Norway to Australia and back again, thereby passing the equator (Linie) twice before being bottled. http://www.linie.com/

And aquavit is derived from the Latin 'Aqua Vitae' or 'Water of Life'. And, the word whisky is derived from the Gaelic version of the phrase 'Water of Life'.

It's all coming full circle now.

Or its just some random fact that's been stuck in my head for too many years.

TheWhoppah:Whisky and whiskey are fundamentally just "wood tea" made with vodak instead of water.

Grain mash. Vodka would be potatoes. Also they're distilled and often blended, which is kind of the opposite of how tea works (tea goes from a concentrate to a dilute through its processing, whiskey goes the other way).

Also, on a similar note to my previous post, Whisky and Whiskey are just different transliterations of an old British Isles word for "water". They aren't separate things and you can just write one or the other, like Hercules and Herakles when you're talking about Greek mythology.

//Aware that z-C already made the second point in the form of a joke, but some people are genuinely confused on the point and I'm feeling educational.

Zeno-25:GBB: Tobin_Lam: I like my Jack Daniels wood chips. They give things a nice flavor and they smell good even before you burn them.

Wood chips.... That give me an idea. If they are looking for more surface area, why don't they use charred wood chips in the barrel? Or perhaps peices of the staves floating around in there?

I have a friend who tried just that, some unaged 'moonshine' from the store in some mason jars with charred bits of hardwood for six months to a year.

It was drinkable, but the only non-alcohol flavor was the vanilla flavors from the wood. He thinks he charred the wood chunks too much.

Maybe filter before drinking. Or was he in too much of a hurry since he couldn't wait the seven years. Did also take into account that the brew isn't suppose to be in the light during the seven years either. They maybe traditions, but they are traditions built on experimentation.

For its Ocean-Aged Bourbon, Jefferson's Reserve placed several barrels on a 126-foot ship and let the casks cruise at sea for nearly four years. The increased oceanic air pressure (compared with its warehouse), along with the Panama Canal's extreme heat pushed the whiskey deeper inside the wood, causing the wood sugars to caramelize and add a rumlike black hue.

But really, sounds like a bunch of bullshiat. We need a distillery in New Orleans so they can claim atmospheric pressures greater than measly sea-level oceanic ones! I would suspect heat and motion the more likely case than small changes in pressure to get more distillate through the wood fibers

lack of warmth:Zeno-25: GBB: Tobin_Lam: I like my Jack Daniels wood chips. They give things a nice flavor and they smell good even before you burn them.

Wood chips.... That give me an idea. If they are looking for more surface area, why don't they use charred wood chips in the barrel? Or perhaps peices of the staves floating around in there?

I have a friend who tried just that, some unaged 'moonshine' from the store in some mason jars with charred bits of hardwood for six months to a year.

It was drinkable, but the only non-alcohol flavor was the vanilla flavors from the wood. He thinks he charred the wood chunks too much.

Maybe filter before drinking. Or was he in too much of a hurry since he couldn't wait the seven years. Did also take into account that the brew isn't suppose to be in the light during the seven years either. They maybe traditions, but they are traditions built on experimentation.

My understanding was that distillers are already doing that for small, fast batches. The idea was that you could get a similar flavor in less time by increasing the surface area of the wood.

Of course, there's certain chemical processes that still require the long years of aging, but it's a process dependent on speed.

Look, I'm a bourbon fan, I have about 12 to choose from in my bar right now, I've done the Urban Bourbon Trail, and the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, I've been to tastings and done tours of distillers not on the "trail".

This stuff is foul, it's a blackish, cloudy color and the taste is the same. Gimmicky bullshiat.

Fubegra:Z-clipped: Speaking of whisky, if anyone's interested, Compass Box is doing some cool stuff like this with their Scotch. Some of their products are downright fantastic, too.

Mmmm, yes. It's too bad the Scotch Whisky Association is such a bunch of stuck-in-the-muds. More than once they've nixed their novel aging techniques.

/finished off the last of my first-edition Spice Tree a couple months back

Man, when that stuff hit the market years ago, I bought a bottle and shelved it. Then heard they were going to be shut down by the gov't, so I resolved not to touch it. Then I saw that Spice Tree was back on the market, so "oh hell" and I opened it. Didn't realize until I went to buy another bottle that the second batch was completely different. *sad trombone*

Oh well, at least I had the pleasure of tasting that sweet spicy goodness.

Jim_Callahan:TheWhoppah: Whisky and whiskey are fundamentally just "wood tea" made with vodak instead of water.

Grain mash. Vodka would be potatoes. Also they're distilled and often blended, which is kind of the opposite of how tea works (tea goes from a concentrate to a dilute through its processing, whiskey goes the other way).

Vodka doesn't have to be made from a potato mash, and often isn't.

Also, I see what TheWhoppah is saying, which I think you missed. The point is that the neutral spirit is absorbing its color and flavor from the charred wood - almost like a tea.

EponymousCowHerd:There is a new distiller in Cleveland that has developed a process for rapid aging of bourbon. They claim they can get the equivalent of 12 years of aging in 6 months.

I have a bottle of it, and it seems decent to me, but I'm not a bourbon connoisseur. I haven't seen anyone do a blind taste test yet, which is the only thing I'd trust.

http://www.clevelandwhiskey.com

I have to say that that sounds about as delicious as imagining the "Steel Reserve" of whiskey. Just the name of the City taints all things that come from there. One envisions burning rivers, rampant pollution, organized crime and lots of rustbelt decay.

For its Ocean-Aged Bourbon, Jefferson's Reserve placed several barrels on a 126-foot ship and let the casks cruise at sea for nearly four years. The increased oceanic air pressure (compared with its warehouse), along with the Panama Canal's extreme heat pushed the whiskey deeper inside the wood, causing the wood sugars to caramelize and add a rumlike black hue.

But really, sounds like a bunch of bullshiat. We need a distillery in New Orleans so they can claim atmospheric pressures greater than measly sea-level oceanic ones! I would suspect heat and motion the more likely case than small changes in pressure to get more distillate through the wood fibers

My guess is it's mostly marketing, although back in sailing ship days, it may have sense to use whisky as ballast, since you had to carry SOMETHING down there...usually rocks.